But most importantly, it’s because American Jewish “leaders”—more than most American Jews—see Jew-hatred as a pervasive force in world affairs, as powerful today as it was in the early twentieth century. In 2009, the ADL’s Abraham Foxman, declared that “global anti-Semitism (is) . . . reaching a peak this year that we haven’t seen since the tragic days of World War II.” In 2010, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations gave a speech entitled, “Is It 1939?”
In claiming that the gentile world’s view of Jews has not fundamentally changed, American Jewish “leaders” have made Iran exhibit A. For two decades, they have described it as the Nazi Germany of our time, motivated primarily by a hunger for world conquest and a thirst for Jewish blood. Such a regime, the argument goes, is impervious to the normal calculations of national self-interest and the normal dynamics of diplomatic compromise. It will respond only to unrelenting economic and military pressure.
As it happens, this is not the view held by top security experts in either America or Israel. In 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that “Iran’s nuclear decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach.”
That same year, the chief of the staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Benny Gantz, while warning that an Iranian nuclear weapon would prove dangerous, told Haaretz that “the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.”
It is this basic assumption: that the Iranian regime - although brutal and despotic - has legitimate national interests and the capacity for rational judgment, which informs Obama’s diplomacy. It is this basic assumption that inclines him to believe that a final nuclear deal can only be reached via compromise, not the unilateral dictates codified in the new Iran sanctions bill. And it is precisely this assumption that American Jewish “leaders” cannot accept, because if Iran is not Nazi Germany, then 2014 is nothing like 1939. And if 2014 is nothing like 1939, then American Jews need Jewish organizations that recognize that today, many of the key challenges facing the Jewish people stem not from our weakness but from our power.
That’s what’s at stake in the struggle over Iran policy currently roiling Washington, a struggle that has the potential to reshape not just American foreign policy, but the landscape of institutional American Jewish life.
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.569957?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.223%2C
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